War Scars
by shaping-up-to-be-pretty-ood
Summary: River and the Doctor find a bedroom that makes the Doctor's repressed feelings explode towards the surface, but he's never been afraid to talk things out with River.


**A/N: I like to think that River knows about Rose, and knows just how sensitive a subject that is for the Doctor. While 11/River is my OTP, I did ship Rose/9-10 like the vast majority of Whovians did and still do. It irritates the hell out of me when people start River-bashing just to write a Rose fic. Like, it was **_**canon**_** that Rose eventually got along with Sarah Jane, and River doesn't seem like the type of woman to be hatefully jealous or anything like that. So instead of getting jealous that her husband has loved other women, River helps him with the emotional repurcussions from the loss of these women so he can cope. Mm. Anyway, enjoy.**

She had always found it funny when he started moaning into her mouth. They were just kissing. It may have been _really_ passionate kissing, possibly with roaming hands and the like, but he didn't need to be moaning. She suddenly found herself being moved towards the stairs, and she broke away. "Are you going to take me to bed, Sweetie?"

He was flushed and breathing hard, something she rarely ever saw. "I suppose I... could." Smiling boyishly, he swept his fringe out of his face. "Dunno."

She laughed, making him smile bigger, and dragged him into the hallway in search of a suitable bedroom.

xXx

It struck the Doctor as odd that it was taking so long to find a bedroom. There were rather a lot of them on this ship, and the fact that they hadn't happened upon one already was unusual to say the least. He considered just stopping and pinning his deliciously flirtatious wife against a hallway wall, but it was hard to be romantic that way. Finally River started pulling him into a room, but he stopped absolutely dead in his tracks when he realized what room it was. Whose. He couldn't let his toes cross the threshold of the room. He couldn't even _feel_ anything. The smell, the sight, the warmth-it was all too much. It hadn't changed in several hundred years. His breathing became painful and forced, dragging roughly along his throat as if it was steel wool.

"No," he choked. "River, _no."_

Leaving his wife standing within the room alone, he ran. Didn't even know where. But really, anywhere was better than having to deal with the heartwrenching guilt associated with that room.

River looked around. What in the world had caused such a dramatic emotional reaction? It wasn't often something like that happened. A picture on the nightstand explained it all though- the tenth incarnation of her husband and another man with dark brown hair and a devious smile had their arms around the shoulders of blonde girl. They were all smiling hugely, and they were all dressed up for what seemed to be a Halloween on Earth. The Doctor wore a brown outfit that looked vaguely familiar and cowboyish, perhaps from a TV show or movie from that time period. The other man looked like a 1920s mobster, but his fedora was pink and the outline of a red heart was sewn onto the breast of his jacket.

Ah. Space cowboy and gangster of love. They thought they were funny.

But that girl-the blonde dressed as Marilyn Monroe-she knew that face. Rose Tyler, the girl who brought the Doctor out of his shell after the Tragedy of Gallifrey. She was considered a war hero in many parts of the galaxy, but she had died at the Battle of Canary Wharf. Songs were written about that blonde girl.

The Doctor had been hopelessly in love with that blonde girl.

xXx

"Why did you keep the room!" He shouted furiously, kicking the wall of whatever hallway he was in. In response the ship lurched and the lights flickered, as if Sexy was giving him a warning not to do it again. He didn't _care._ "Did you keep the rest of them after they were gone? If I go looking could I find Susan's room? Romana's? Peri's? Martha's? Brig's? Sarah Jane's? Why did you do it?!" Even as he was raging at his ship for keeping the room of his former companion intact, he knew why she did it. She missed them just as much as he did. Sometimes he forgot just how sentient Sexy was, how she was just as conscious as any other living creature in the universe. Maybe she liked the weight of those rooms with her, to remind her just how much they had lost together in nine hundred years. Once he calmed down he really thought about that, and came to the conclusion that he didn't blame her for keeping the rooms any more than he blamed himself for keeping all his outifts. They're just sentimental. Every separate thing has a different meaning to you than anyone else in the universe, everything has its meaning. And honestly, it was nice to think that he still had some way to hold onto them and keep himself grounded. He sat on the ground, pressing his palms to the floor tenderly. "I'm sorry, old girl. I didn't mean to get so upset. I just can't think about her. About any of them, really. It... it _hurts._" Warmth pulsed to his palms, and he knew this was his girl's way of giving him a nice good hug and kissing him on the top of the head. "I love you too." He heaved a sigh and got to his feet. "I think I'll go back and see if River's still there, hmm? It was awfully rude of me to leaving her standing in another woman's bedroom."

xXx

She was waiting outside the door for his return. "Are you okay now, my love?"

He gave her an "as-well-as-I-can-be" gesture with his head. "Do you want to hear about her?" he murmured quietly, capturing a stray golden curl between two fingers.

"Only if you think you can."

Taking her hand and walking back into Rose's room, he took a bracing breath. "She was so sassy. All the time. Wasn't afraid to challenge me, and Nine-that's when she first started travelling with me-was quite the pig-headed man. Listen to me, talking about myself like I'm not the same person. Saved my life from the Nestene Consciousness the day after she met me, and then we were just gone. We watched the end of the world together and she nearly died. But I had fallen in love with her the minute she had ran through the TARDIS doors trying to escape from an Auton copy of her boyfriend... And a rather poorly done one at that. I don't know what exactly happened there, he really wasn't that believable. I like what the Consciousness did with the Romans much better, he actually put some effort into it to make it believable that they were real... Oh. Right. Rose. She spooked when she saw the inside, and ran back out... but somehow I knew she would just come right back in. She kept on saving my life, whether she knew it or not, until finally I had to save her from saving me after I had tried to save her. I died. When I was Ten... Oh, man, I wanted her so bad. It was easier to control myself as Nine, just put on my stoic face and try not to break the mask for anything. But Ten. I loved to hug absolutely everyone, and I smiled so much, and I accidentally made it obvious just how much I loved her. Then she was ripped away from me, stuck in a parallel universe, and I didn't get to tell her I loved her. I started getting bitter. I had two other women travelling with me until I saw her again, and then I got shot by a Dalek and nearly regenerated. But through an incredibly complicated sequence of events that would take far too long to explain, I got duplicated and that version of me stayed with her in the other universe. She got her happy ending, but I was left with my hearts torn in tiny pieces... I actually met you before the last time I saw her. Spoilers, of course... but I did. It was very confusing to be in love with two women at once." He smiled wistfully, but she couldn't fathom why his voice sounded so much sadder just then. "You two are a lot alike. I've never really met anyone else that would challenge me on things like the two of you. You, of course, you're just so smug about it that it makes me want to snog the smirk right off your face, but Rose was more like wanting to pat her on the hand and tell her how smart and special she was. I wish you could've met her, River. I think you would've been thick as thieves. And perhaps you are both thieves."

"And what exactly have we stolen?"

He laughed. "Oh, I thought that was obvious. Me. You stole me. My hearts. My love. But most of all, you took away my pain. Every mental scar that was inflicted on me while neither of you were with me... I always forgot them in your presence. I was just a man in love, not a man who had disrupted thousands of civilizations, or had been responsible for the destruction of my own planet. Just me. Just the Doctor, with a fantastic complementing love by my side and the whole universe at our fingertips."

River smiled and rested her head on her husband's shoulder, earning a hug. "You had to have been a poet in a past life."

"Or future."

"Yes, or future."

He kissed the top of her head, relishing in the sweet smell of her hair. He wondered if she purposely washed her hair with shampoo infused with relaxing scents, simply because she noticed how much he smelled her curls. Because that was just the kind of thing that River would do. Be subtle, but amazingly powerful at the same time. The perfect murder turned into the perfect love story. The Doctor and River Song.

He could still remember the first time he had ever seen her come through those TARDIS doors.


End file.
